Heart of America’s Oil Boom Can’t Fetch Good Prices for Its Crude

The main U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, has soared to its highest level in years at $71 a barrel. Good luck getting that price in west Texas. In the epicenter of America’s drilling boom, crude is going for less than $60 because oil output there has overwhelmed pipelines that connect the Texas desert to markets along the Gulf Coast and abroad. U.S. oil prices are splintering because of bottlenecks in the region such as crowded pipelines and worker shortages. Analysts and investors worry such logjams will threaten the profits of Permian producers and slow crude output at a time when the global oil market is already facing limited supplies because of disruptions from Iran and Venezuela . That would propel rising oil prices even higher. Producers would like to get their oil to places like Houston, where oil can be loaded onto tankers and shipped overseas. There, the […]